The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Ghostbusters team up for a little cross franchise action. Is it good?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters #1 (IDW Publishing)
After a helpful primer on both the franchises’ main characters (and a few key supporting ones), the story kicks off in ancient Japan during the time period explored in the Secret History of the Foot Clan miniseries. After a cool (and very well drawn) bit of backstory, the old cliché standby of ‘villain-rushing-to-judgment-of-betrayal’ leads one of the Turtles enemies to fall through a dimensional portal.
Meanwhile back in the present, the Turtles themselves are marveling at Donnie’s work on a dimensional teleporter of his own (which is a far cry from what’s currently going on in the main series).
After deciding to innocently test it out, Harold is accosted by a fly (not Baxter Stockman, just a regular house fly) which causes him to accidentally send the Turtles to another dimension altogether.
As you have probably already guessed, that dimension is where the Ghostbusters reside. It’s also where their enemy from the past has landed, laying the groundwork for a corporate synergy infused team up.
Is it Good?
I kind of liked how the existence of the Ghostbusters and other major franchises were handled in the X-Files: Conspiracy miniseries.
Here, however, writers Erik Burnham and Tom Waltz have taken the well-worn fictional approach of traveling through time and alternate dimensions.
Unfortunately, the set up for all our main characters to arrive in one place is so contrived it’s painful.
“All is going according to plan” is the supervillain equivalent of a teenager in a horror film saying “I’ll be right back.”
On the other hand, the dialogue between all the various teams is a lot of fun and the multi-headed art crew does a fantastic job.
Let’s hope that we can dig into a good story now that the (poorly executed) excuse for these two franchises to be working together has been established.
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